Contact: Yadira Pacheco, World Vision International, newsvision@wvi.org

MEDIA ADVISORY, Oct. 26 /Standard Newswire/ -- The earthquake that shook the central coast of Peru on 25 August left hundreds of people dead or injured, and 85,000 families homeless.

Survivors not only have to get over the tragedy of losing their families, friends and neighbours, they also have to get used to living in improvised tents with no facilities.

For Hilda Chacaltana, 30, this is more than she can bear. She has passed through many difficulties in her life, but never anything so frightening and frustrating as the earthquake and its aftermath.

On the afternoon of the earthquake, Hilda was at university attending a law class. Suddenly everything was shaking from one side to the other. She came down from the third floor and ran as fast as she could toward her mother's place at the market.

"People were crying and asking for help, but I couldn't stop until I saw my mum holding my baby," she remembers.

When Hilda and her mother got home, they discovered that their house was destroyed. They spent the night outside, sitting on the dirt in front of the house.

Hilda worked most of her life helping her mother in a small business. They sold vegetables outside the market in the city of Ica. After many years of saving she built a small house of two rooms and a kitchen for her mother, her sister and her three-year-old son.

Since the earthquake, the family has lived in a shack they made for themselves with clothing, plastic and mats rescued from the rubble.

"My son has asthma and I fear for him because it's very cold at night. Now we sleep on a thin mattress on the floor," said Hilda.

It is hard to start every day. Hilda wakes up and realises that they no longer have anything: no house, no job, no university.

Hilda wanted to become a lawyer to defend women from abuse, because, as she says, "there are such a kind of men," like the one who abandoned her when she became pregnant.

Now everything seems distant from her. The university collapsed, as did the market. Her home is now full of rubble. "We cannot even work to take our minds off what happened, and I think that I will have to leave my studies to search for another job," she said.

All of this sadness is changing little by little, because there is always somebody there encouraging them to go on. Forty-seven neighbours from the fourth block of 'Señor de Luren', one of the most devastated shanty towns on the outskirts of Ica, formed a community kitchen to prepare group lunches.

A shortly after the earthquake, World Vision distributed 50 pots to four community kitchens in four Señor de Luren neighbourhoods, and later distributed 318 family kits, which each contained blankets, a stove, plates, cups, utensils and tools to remove the rubble. People also received mat sheets to protect their temporary shelters from cold.

"Tonight we will have a warm night after many days. It has been a blessing of God to receive all of these things. It helps us to start again," said Hilda, smiling after receiving her kit.

She asked the help of some neighbourhood children to carry her package to her place and then showed everybody the things inside.

With the support of the government of Australia through its embassy for Peru, Ecuador and Chile, World Vision was able to deliver this aid and help the affected people to recover from the impact of the terrible earthquake.

World Vision has provided material and emotional aid to the most affected people in Ica, Chincha and Pisco since the day after the earthquake. A month later it reached out to over 12,000 families with food, water, clothing, shoes, blankets, kitchen ware, tools, school supplies and materials for temporary shelters.